Cold
Title: Cold (parts 1 and 2)
Disclaimer: DC Comics and Warner Bros. Inc. own Batman and the Joker, and I'm not making any money off of this story.
Prompt: Role reversal (for the knights and anarchy challenge)
Characters/pairings: Batman/Joker
Warnings and rating: PG-13 for violence and masochism
Summary: After Alfred is murdered, the Joker finds Batman teaching his murderer a lesson, and doesn't enjoy Batman's fall as much as he thought he would.
I had been watching Bruce interrogate the man for almost ten minutes. A little messy, even for me. Slash, slash, bang, bang, haha. But Brucey had gotten better at his technique since the last time I’d seen him work, and that time I’d been on the other side of the scalpel, so to speak. This time I got to play the voyeur. Not nearly as entertaining, but then again, maybe my status as an impartial observer would allow me to give him an unbiased review of his performance. If he was doing that to me, well, let’s just say that I would be having too much fun to pay much attention to style.
But there was something wrong here. Sure, it was fun watching him debase himself by torturing his butler’s murderer, but the more I watched him, the more I realized that Bats wasn’t enjoying it. He was brutal, efficient, but it was like all the passionate anger that had drawn me to Bats in the first place had just gone cold. There was no madness or anger; Bruce had turned into a hollow vessel for the ruthless killer Batman was about to become. I realized at that moment that it was Bruce’s ability to care that made Batman’s rage burn so hot, and if the man beneath the mask were to ever be destroyed, Batman would become just as unremarkable as all the rest of the killers in Gotham.
The thought made me nauseous-I’d be all alone again-and before I knew it, I was running forward to stop him from slitting the junky’s throat.
“No, Bats! Don’t kill him!” I yelled, grabbing onto his arm and using all my body weight to pull him back from his intended victim. The junky’s eyes widened when he saw me, but for some reason he didn’t seem very comforted that I was coming to his rescue, because he just giggled in this high pitched way before his eyes rolled up into his head and he fainted.
Bruce’s eyes were ice-cold, just like his knife-strokes, and he eyed my hand on his arm without his usual anger, but as if my touched carried some sort of contagious disease. Seeing that he probably wouldn’t try to make a lunge towards the lump of meat he’d tied to the chair, at least not until I’d had my say, I let his arm go. I would like to say it didn’t hurt when he looked at me with that sort of condescending hatred, but he had never looked at me like that, not even when I had killed Rachel. Strange, how you could spend the better part of two years trying your hardest to make a guy hate you, only to realize once it happens that that’s the last thing you really wanted. Ah, what do they call that? Oh yes. Poetic justice.
“Don’t try to stop me,” he growled. “You, of all people, don’t have a right to judge me.”
“Of course not, Bats, but I’m just tryin’ ta offer some perspective here. I mean, do ya really think this is what your butler would want?” He just stared at me in disbelieving silence for a moment, apparently too stunned by my words to say anything, and I didn’t blame him. I’d just said the first things that came to my mind, and what did it matter if it didn’t line up with what I would normally tell him? I had the right to change my mind, didn’t I? I had a feeling I was going to have to up the ante, though, if I was going to get the reaction from him I wanted. Match, meet oxygen…“Do ya really think it’s what Rachel would want, for you to become a murderer, like me? You know, she was so desperate to save the man she loved, that she went down on me, thinkin’ I would spare her Harvey-”
Before I even saw him make a move towards me, he’d slammed me against the wonderfully hard stone wall. Damn. I wanted ninja training. Maybe I should ask him to teach me. I wonder how good he’d hurt me, then.
“Don’t ever speak her name again!” Ah, there was the anger I missed so much. I watched with fascination as the ice cold not-Bruce shattered into a million pieces, and all that was left was that wonderful hot rage, and grief so deep that I could barely begin to comprehend it. Had I ever felt that way for anybody, to miss them so much? I didn’t know, but I suddenly wanted to, more than anything. Grief was better than Bruce’s emptiness, and it was better than… Who was I? It was funny, I had never let myself think on it, and it had never bothered me until now. What kind of person doesn’t even remember his own name?
I was rudely shaken out of my rumination when he slammed me into the wall again, then pinned me there by closing his hand over my throat in a vice-like grasp. My eyes rolled back into my head in bliss as I tried to gasp for air and only succeeded in becoming more lightheaded. “You murdered her just to push me over the edge, and you dare to complain now that I’ve started to see the world the way you do? That man is a worthless piece of slime, and I am going to rid the world of people like him, starting with you.”
I laughed and moaned in the same breath, wheezing through his crushing grasp, and he dropped me to the cold cement floor, repulsed.
“Go ahead, Bruce. Kill me. KILL ME!” I demanded as I knelt before him, licking nice salty blood from my lips. I must have bitten the inside of my mouth at some point in this exchange.
I met his enraged gaze unblinkingly, knowing there was something about the way I looked when I was actually serious that shook people to the core, even him. “I’m sure mommy and daddy would be so proud of you for ridding the world of a monster like me. Until they, uh, found out that you started fucking me in dark allies months after I murdered the woman you said you loved-ah!”
He’d tackled me fully to the ground and I was in a haze of pain and bliss as his fists bruised the tender tissue of my arms and legs and, mmm, yes, split my lip, but all too soon, all the wonderful pain stopped. He collapsed on top of me, shaking with what I at first thought was laughter but soon realized were tearless sobs.
“God dammit!” he growled, pounding his bloodied knuckles into the cement on either side of my body, and I squirmed with displeasure, wondering why he’d stopped hitting me. The plan had worked, but he was supposed to take his anger out on me, not…not this.
“They all die, they all die and I’m still here! I can’t…” he trailed off, the grief evidently becoming too much to voice. When I felt the first cool tears fall onto my neck, I froze, horrified, but relieved even more. Batman and the Joker were gods, but I’d realized that so much of what I craved about Batman was just… mortal. I felt dark amusement turn up my lips as I held him and whispered sweet little nothings in his ear-don’t you worry Bruce, you’ll surely stress yourself to death before anyone else you care about shakes off that mortal coil-and began to lick that wonderful mixture of blood and tears from his face.
Bruce was back; he’s never hard to find under all that anger, but now, now there were unwelcome questions spinning around in my mind that had never even mattered before. I leaned into the warmth of his body as closely as I could, pressing it to my skin, taking it as my own. I was just so coldcoldcolcold, and oh my God, who was I?